Bill Nye talks solar sailing with LightSail 2 on Facebook Live with Bruce Betts and Danielle Gunn. Featuring a special appearance from Robert Picardo. Support the LightSail mission at planetary.org/launchpad
Filmed live on Sept 7th, 2017 from Planetary Society headquarters in Pasadena, CA.
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The Planetary Society has inspired millions of people to explore other worlds and seek other life. With the mission to empower the world's citizens to advance space science and exploration, its international membership makes the non-governmental Planetary Society the largest space interest group in the world. Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman founded the Planetary Society in 1980. Bill Nye, a longtime member of the Planetary Society's Board, serves as CEO.

Bill Nye at the Australian Embassy - The Space Advocate

Bill Nye and the space policy team visited the Australian Embassy in Washington D.C. to talk about space exploration and working together to change the world.
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About The Planetary Society:
The Planetary Society has inspired millions of people to explore other worlds and seek other life. With the mission to empower the world's citizens to advance space science and exploration, its international membership makes the non-governmental Planetary Society the largest space interest group in the world. Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman founded the Planetary Society in 1980. Bill Nye, a longtime member of the Planetary Society's Board, serves as CEO.

Bill Nye on how to make the most of the solar eclipse

NASA estimates a total solar eclipse happens where you live an average of once every 375 years. The path of totality stretches across the U.S. from Oregon to South Carolina. Bill Nye, scientist and CEO of the Planetary Society, joins "CBS This Morning" from Beatrice, Nebraska, to discuss what to expect.
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Science on the Sun - Bill Nye & the Totally Awesome Total Eclipse

Bill Nye explains how to see the Milky Way after a solar eclipse and Dr. Tyler Nordgren shows an ancient eclipse petroglyph.
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Syzygy on Mars - Bill Nye & the Totally Awesome Total Eclipse

Bill Nye loves syzygy and Dr. Ashwin Vasavada from JPL talks about a curious eclipse on Mars.
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The Planetary Society has inspired millions of people to explore other worlds and seek other life. With the mission to empower the world's citizens to advance space science and exploration, its international membership makes the non-governmental Planetary Society the largest space interest group in the world. Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman founded the Planetary Society in 1980. Bill Nye, a longtime member of the Planetary Society's Board, serves as CEO.

Path of Totality - Bill Nye & the Totally Awesome Total Eclipse

Bill Nye explains the basics of a solar eclipse, the path of totality, and how to safely view a solar eclipse with National Park Ranger Coral O'Riley.
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2017 North American Total Solar Eclipse

Bill Nye loves Total Solar Eclipses! He and CaLisa Lee are here to announced our partnership with the U.S. National Parks Service for the upcoming Total Solar Eclipse across North America on August 21st, 2017. Learn more at http://planet.ly/gXkho
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Study Science, Think Abstractly, Change the World | Bill Nye

What do you do if you're a diehard science lover who dreams of one day donning a lab coat professionally, but you're struggling with the work at school? That is Caitlin's predicament—but that's not how Bill Nye sees it. Your school classes may not come naturally to you, but that's because science is a skill, not a talent. No one is born a scientist, it is something you become over time with hard work, and if perhaps biology isn't hitting home with you, you may find your groove in astronomy. Physics isn't for everyone, but chemistry might be your match. The point is, there is a kind of science for everyone. So to change the world as a scientist, here's what you have to do: #1. Don't give up before it's begun. #2. Study hard and get to college. #3. Practice science as a way of thinking (and algebra specifically) to develop abstract thinking skills. #4. Find the field in which you belong, and start to chip away at change. Bill Nye's most recent book is Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World.
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Transcript: Caitlin: Hey Bill. I’m currently a junior in high school and I’m getting ready to apply to college in the near future. I’ve always loved science but it’s never been a subject to come naturally to me and I’ve always struggled in it a little bit. Do you think that there’s a possibility I could pick science as my major and become hopefully a scientist one day in the future despite the fact that it doesn’t come naturally to me? Thank you very much.
Bill Nye: Caitlin, of course there’s a chance for you to become a scientist. What, are you kidding me? Of course, young woman, go for it! There’s all sorts of sciences that I bet will come naturally to you. Chemistry and physics may not be your thing, or maybe they’re your favorite. Statistics always made me crazy although I did it. So yes, there’s a science for you, you’re doggone right.
I would please consider pursuing as many science courses as you can handle. You don’t have to start with 400-level courses, you know, senior in college level courses, just try astronomy. Astronomy is empowering and wonderful. It’s humbling and empowering all at the same time. Try biology. The discoveries being made in genetics right now are amazing and will change the course of human history. Try chemistry. Without chemistry we would not have these textiles and this fabulous glass in these electronics that are enabling us to have this computer conversation. No, just go for it, of course!
The big thing I remind everybody though is algebra. Algebra is really important and it was hard for me too. You’ve just got to practice. You’ve got to practice algebra over and over. And the reason it’s valuable, apparently, research suggests thinking abstractly about numbers enables you to think abstractly about all sorts of things.
So go back if you need to. If you’re a junior just do a little more algebra and I bet you’re more comfortable with the whole idea. And you might change the world. Go get 'em, Caitlin!

Bill Nye: Would Humanity Make Peace with Aliens—or War?

Finding an alien civilization will change humanity dramatically, but not so much in the obvious ways. Will we interact, trade, learn from one another's technology, or start intergalactic wars? None of that is highly likely, mostly for logistical reasons. Bill Nye thinks that the change will be more of an internal, philosophical, and spiritual change. What will it mean for humans to not be the only living thing in the cosmos? Many of us want to know and so, operating on just a small budget running in the background of all other scientific pursuits, there are astronomers and physicists continually looking and listening for life out there so that we may one day be able to ask ourselves that very question. Bill Nye's most recent book is Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World.
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Transcript: If humanity at some point in the future discovered another alien civilization, at least mildly comparable to our own, if society as it is now stayed basically the same, how do you think we would react to it, you know: be violent or have a new colonial era, or make peace and advance with everyone or something like that? Thank you.
BILL NYE: What if we found or discovered another alien civilization, would there be colonization? I hope not. I just feel that another alien civilization probably couldn’t live on the earth and we probably couldn’t live there. There’s too many details that wouldn’t work, unless we’re all wearing spacesuits. But maybe. I just don’t think that there would be that much interaction. That is to say, I think it’s much more like we will find an alien civilization on a world so distant, so remote, that there won’t be going back and forth in spaceships. If it’s, let’s say, 40 lightyears, as it is to these TRAPPIST-1 planets, the ones they found around this very cold or relatively cold small star—cool star, then the way we’d communicate with them is by radio or by light, electromagnetic waves. And so there wouldn’t be a chance for colonization or misplaced bank accounts or whatever else would go wrong—or warfare. That just wouldn’t be possible. Instead though, it would be profound. It would change the way everybody feels about being a living thing in the cosmos. It would be extraordinary. And furthermore we do this research looking for alien civilizations at a tiny fraction of our international budget. It’s a worthy thing to always be doing in the background. Listening and looking for aliens.

March for Science Earth Day 2017 Speaker - Bill Nye

On Earth Day, April 22, 2017, The March for Science ignited a global movement to defend the vital role science plays in our health, safety, economies, and governments.
Bill Nye - CEO, The Planetary Society; TV host, "Bill Nye Saves The World"
He is best known as the host of the PBS children's science show Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Bill Nye Explains the Scientific Method and His Greatest Accomplishment in Life

Bill Nye has many feathers in his cap — he's the CEO of The Planetary Society, has a brand-new Netflix show, flew on Air Force One with President Obama, has at least six honorary doctorate degrees and two books to his name — but there's thing one he's most proud of, and he shares it with Tracey, a 19-year-old student just beginning her science studies at college. As she steps into a lifelong pursuit of science, Nye advises her on the greatest contribution scientists can make to their community. Dropping awe-inspiring facts and publishing groundbreaking findings are exciting parts of being a scientist but the greatest contribution a scientist can make is to educate people — especially kids from a young age — about the scientific method. Carl Sagan, Bill Nye's mentor, can explain this in better words than anyone: "Science is more than a body of knowledge, it’s a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan — political or religious — who comes ambling along. The people have to be educated, and they have to practice their skepticism and their education otherwise we don’t run the government, the government runs us." Bill Nye's most recent book is Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World.
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Tracy: Dear Bill Nye. My name is Tracy, and as today is my nineteenth birthday, and I’m pursuing my education in the sciences thanks to the influence of worldly educators such as yourself. My question to you is: what do you think is the most beneficial thing a scientist can do for the community, and what do you consider your greatest accomplishment as a scientist and an educator. All the best, and thank you for your contributions to the generations ahead of you.
Bill Nye: Tracy. I’m delighted that you are pursuing a career in science. We need as many scientifically literate people as we can in our society so that when it’s time to vote and make decisions about our future we do it with an informed way with science as the background. So thank you. This is fabulous.
As far as my contribution, that’s a very nice question. I think it’s getting young people excited about science so that in the future we’ll have scientifically literate people. And what we want is for people – it’s not just the facts. The facts are great. They often change as we learn more but the big thing is to get the process of science. You make an observation, your eyebrows go up, you say to yourself my goodness, what caused that? And then you come up with an idea or a hypothesis of what made that effect happen, this phenomenon that you observed. And then you come up with a way to test it. You test it and then you see what happened and compare what you thought would happen with what did happen. And you’re comparing your hypothesis to the outcome. If we can get that across to as many people as possible we can, Tracy, dare I say it change the world. That’s a great question.

Bill Nye uses the power of Twitter to answer some common science questions.
Check out Bill's new show on Netflix "Bill Nye Saves The World" premiering April 21st!
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Bill Nye: Will Robots Take Everyone's Job?

There are two schools of thought about job automation: one rejects the idea as robots "stealing" human jobs, while the other cannot wait to put its feet up and tuck into some Proust — finally, free time for all those 3,000-page beasts of literature! The reality, as usual, is somewhere in between. An increasing number of professions will become automated, but Bill Nye believes there will always be a place for human ingenuity. We started building complex machines centuries ago because there are things we would rather be doing — like building new machines, refining mathematics, continuing our education, or exploring the universe. There are some jobs it would be better for robots to have: industrial welding, driving trains, packing warehouse orders, admin — why not make our lives less strenuous? "We want to automate the world to the extent that is comfortable, but no more," Nye says. Job automation is scary in the way that large-scale change usually is, but Nye thinks it will be a positive inflection point for humanity, enriching our existence with more debate, art, invention, sport, and discovery. Bill Nye's most recent book is Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World.
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Transcript: Hey Bill. My name’s Ian and I’m a computer science student. So the fields of machine learning and robotics have been making technological advances and replacing human labor at a blinding speed. And at this point it seems almost inevitable that virtually all jobs are going to be automated in the future. So my question is this: When and if machines replace our jobs, what should we spend our lives accomplishing instead? Is there some greater goal that we should aim toward? Thank you so much.
Bill Nye: Machines are going to replace every job? What about this job right here man?! What about that, I’m thinking! What about that man?
So I think there will still be a great many jobs that require human involvement. After all, why have humans build machines if there isn’t something humans want to do? Like play baseball or argue about what machines are going to do.
So I claim that there’s a lot of jobs that we would all prefer machines do. I don’t know if you’ve ever made pancake batter mixing it by hand; It’s okay. Cake batter, mixing it by hand; It’s okay. But it’s easier to do it with an electric mixer.
I don’t know if you’ve gotten up every morning and adjusted the thermostat in your apartment or house, and then when you leave for work or school you turn it back down. And then when you come home you turn it back up, and then right before you go to bed you turn it back down. I don’t know if you’ve done all that, but automating that seems to me cool and nice.
I don’t know how much welding you’ve done of auto bodies. It’s a cool skill to develop but it’s not one that really we all are going to need in the future.
My grandfather went into World War I on a horse. He was apparently a skilled enough horseback rider to live through it. It’s not a skill that most – I grew up driving a stick shift in a car. I can drive a stick shift. It’s not a skill you need anymore. I mean very seldom.
So it’s okay man! As jobs become automated humans will go do what humans want to do: Come up with new machines, come up with new ideas, new techniques in mathematics that will simplify things even more. Make discoveries of life on another world.
And what I still love about movies and television and computer videos: it’s still handmade. I so love that. The lights are put in by hand. We make these decisions about what questions to take from you by hand (or by brain). And I still love that.
So yes, we want to automate the world to the extent that is comfortable, but no more. We can do this man! It’s going to be great.
You go to the airport. You get on the train between terminals you trust that it’s going to drive you from one place to another without crashing because engineers have been very diligent setting it up. The train figures how much people weigh and their luggage, provides the right amount of electricity to accelerate and decelerate the train and we trust that. That’s good. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to want to travel. It’s good.
That’s a good question though. Carry on man.

Denial comes in all flavors. Some think the moon landing was staged, some think Tupac is alive, and others reject vaccines. If the United States learnt anything in the 2016 election, it's that social bubbles need to be broken down — so how do you reason with someone who ignores evidence or bends it to fit their worldview? This has been on Bill Nye's mind more and more since climate change denial has become a political issue rather than a scientific one. People can't change their minds instantly when their beliefs are ingrained, so it's not a matter of convincing them on the spot. Nye suggests working together towards scientific understanding by tactfully pointing out that perhaps this person is rejecting evidence because the alternative makes them uncomfortable. Understanding is a process, not a flip switch. Bill Nye's most recent book is Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World.
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Daniel: Hi Bill. My name is Daniel from Texas. My question is how do you reach someone who is maybe a conspiracy theorist or someone who is anti-vaccines, someone who is staunchly scientifically illiterate and agree with them on what a good source of facts is? Thank you.
Bill Nye: So Daniel. How do I recommend reasoning with a conspiracy theorist. Right now, the last couple of months I’ve been messing around with this idea of cognitive dissonance. This is to say you have a world view; You’re presented with evidence that conflicts with the world view; So you either have to change your world view, which is hard because you’ve lived your whole life with it, or you just dismiss the evidence and dismiss the authorities that may have provided the evidence. The authority could be a person or it could be a book. Or, excuse me, an article on the electric-internet-computer-machine.
So you dismiss the evidence, so that you don’t have this discomfort or conflict in your mind—this dissonance. That’s what I’m working with right now, and apparently the way to overcome that is to say, “We’re all in this together, let’s learn about this together.”
Present the conspiracy theorist with the idea that he or she may be rejecting evidence because it’s just so uncomfortable. And you’re in it together. We’re in it together. I’m uncomfortable too. But when it comes to moon landings, just ask the person how you would generate all that paperwork! The warehouses full of documentation that NASA created to make landings on the moon would overwhelm anybody trying to do it on the side. It would just be very difficult to print all that.
And just understand it’s a process. Somebody who has a world view that’s inconsistent with evidence—and I may have some—it takes a while for you to turn around. Like the example of palm reading it’s not something that people reverse their ideas on immediately. It takes, in my experience it takes about two years for somebody to sort of look at palm reading, look at cold-reading or a tarot card reading for a while and then realize that these tarot card readers/palm readers are just taking information that you’ve given them, the client has given them, and feeding it back to you.
It takes a long time and in the same way people who are anti-vaccine I think have just lost sight of the history. Vaccines—you know, part of the reason I’m able to be here talking with you is my grandparents did not die in 1918 during the Spanish flu when it is estimated 50 million people died—Twice as many people as were killed in combat in World War I died of this disease.
If you go to old cemeteries you can see these tombstones of very young people who died of the flu. So people just lost sight of history, and we all tend to go, “Well look at the facts. Change your mind!” But it takes people a couple of years to change their mind. So my recommendation, Daniel, is: stick with it! You’ll get frustrated, the person will get frustrated, but present the idea of cognitive dissonance. This is my latest idea about a way to work together to a scientific understanding.

Bill Nye Explains Why NASA Should Stay Focused on Mars

Mar.28 -- Bill Nye, chief executive officer of The Planetary Society, explains why Mars exploration is important and discusses the future of science funding under President Trump. He speaks with Bloomberg's Cory Johnson on "Bloomberg Technology."

Bill Nye on Climate Change: We Could Engineer Low-Methane Cows — or Eat Less Meat

Make all the jokes you want, says Bill Nye, but methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, and as Earth's population increases so too does the size of the meat industry that caters to it. Demand for meat is growing steeply in developing nations, according to the Heinrich Böll Foundation, and the methane emitted by livestock is undoubtedly contributing atmospheric gases and accelerating global warming. So is a plant-based diet the answer, slashing the demand placed on the meat and dairy industries? Nye finds himself choosing to eat more and more vegetarian dishes, so while he hasn't gone 'full vegan' yet, his awareness of the problem has sparked a reductionist diet. Nye also mentions that agricultural scientists may soon find themselves under public pressure to reduce methane output. One way they might do that? Changing the bacteria in livestock's stomachs so they metabolize food with less methane byproduct. So we could bio-engineer the stomachs of other animals, or we could simply reduce the amount of animal products that go into our own.
Bill Nye's most recent book is Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World.
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Erin: Hey Bill. I’m Erin and I’m from Scotland. I went vegan after I watched documentaries like Before the Flood and Cowspiracy. It presented me with lots of terrifying information such as that from the FAO which suggests that 14.5 to 18 percent of the world’s global emissions are due to animal agriculture. However, Worldwatch suggests it’s closer to 51 percent. I was wondering if you knew why there was such a difference between these two figures and whether you think that adopting a vegan diet is the best thing we can do as individuals for the planet.
Bill Nye: Erin, you raised a very good point. I don’t know why the two figures in those two studies, the documentary and the—was it a scientific paper?—are discrepant, but it probably has to do with trying to assay or figure out how much greenhouse gas is created by cattle or other livestock.
And the problem, everybody, is that livestock eat plants; then bacteria in their livestock stomachs metabolize the plant material into methane, natural gas. And you can make all the jokes you want, but methane is a very strong greenhouse gas.
The first place I’d look to find the reasons for the discrepancy between the two figures is in the amount of greenhouse gas supposed to come from a cow or a sheep or goat.
So with humans, the human population getting so big that we are raising so many farm animals, it’s very reasonable that we’re creating a tremendous amount of extra methane that wouldn’t otherwise be there in the atmosphere. And that is causing global warming and climate change to happen more rapidly than would otherwise.
However, if humans weren’t there animals would be all over the place anyway; it’s not clear that they’d be in these concentrations though.
It could be a difficult thing to measure, but it’s also reasonable that agriculture researchers are going to produce or breed farm animals that produce less methane by changing the bacteria that are in their stomachs that metabolize plant matter.
To get all the way down to a plant based diet might be tricky for a lot of people. However, it seems like a good idea. Check in with me in a few months, because I noticed that my diet is becoming increasingly vegetarian, and so in the next little while I may be all the way over. “Why aren’t you now Bill?” That’s a great question. I’m working it—I’m working on it.
It’s a very interesting question and and an important one. And literally a huge one because we’re talking about the Earth’s atmosphere. Thank you Erin.

'Hey Bill Nye, Does Consciousness Transcend the Brain?'

Consciousness is one of the big questions humanity longs to have answered. What makes us human? What is the experience of consciousness that we all feel exists intuitively, but that we have no evidence-based theory to explain — and also where is it? There are many schools of thought on the topic. Philosopher Alva Noë says consciousness isn’t in the brain, and that looking for it there is like “trying to find the dancing in the musculature of the dancer or trying to find the value of money in the chemical composition of the dollar bill.” Then there are philosophers and neuroscientists who believe that consciousness is caused by neuronal oscillations, and that it’s contained in the brain. For some, it originates there but it could also be an emergent energy or vibration that goes beyond our bodies. There is no proof either way, and until there is, Bill Nye personally takes the molecular view. Do you agree that our physical, chemical brains are the beginning and end of consciousness? Bill Nye's most recent book is Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World (goo.gl/UHAQIJ).
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Peter: Hello Bill. My name is Peter. I live in Miami and I have a hypothetical question for you. If we could clone or build a human brain atom by atom so that the second brain was an exact copy of the first brain and we decided to clone Bill Nye my question is would the second brain also be Bill Nye or do you think consciousness transcends the physical structure and biochemical processes of the brain? Thank you.
Bill Nye: If I understand your question we make a replica of Bill Nye’s brain – very troubling at some level. I don’t think there’s any consciousness or soul or awareness that exists outside of our physical brains. This is a very difficult question to answer. Extraordinary claims are made on both sides - the molecular people like me and the spiritual people like others.
There’s no reason to think – for me there’s no reason to think there’s something beyond the physical brain. And I say this because the experience I had with people as they grow old. Their consciousness, their awareness changes. And I’m talking about people who lose their cognitive abilities. The most reasonable explanation for that for me is the chemical brain is all you get.
The nature of consciousness is a deep and wonderful question. Furthermore would this brain that you produce be just like Bill Nye. I think the answer is clearly no because the Bill Nye you have here is based on all these life experiences which could only happen during the time I have been alive.
In other words I remember Nixon resigning. I remember the moon landing. I remember 9/11 but this new brain you create of Bill Nye will not have had all those experiences. He may not have played ultimate Frisbee with an old Wham-o master. He has only played with a 165 gram disc so his experiences just could be totally different if you see what I’m driving at.
So while this is a wonderful question I’d like all of us to think about the nature of consciousness. And this has all kinds of implications about how you treat other people and how you treat other organisms, other animals. Is there a gradient? You know when I go to the zoo, you know, when I go to the zoo I see the gorillas, the bonobos, chimpanzees. They’re looking at me, they’re thinking “chimpanzetical” thoughts. They’re thinking about something and they’re experiencing life in many ways the same way I do or would.
But there’s something else about me or us that’s different. I mean there’s no evidence that gorillas do calculus for example. At least not formally. And so there’s something else that seems to me best explained as a gradient of chemical processes that happen in our wet computer brains that where our brains have managed to set aside a little more space for cognitive thought.
For example, a blue whale has an enormous brain but most of that brain apparently is used for running a blue whale, not for doing extraordinary philosophical treatises.
If I’m wrong, this turns out to be wrong that’ll be exciting. It’s a great question. Thank you.

Bill Nye: How NASA Will Look for Alien Life in the TRAPPIST-1 System, and Beyond

When NASA announced the discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 solar system in February 2017, humanity’s collective ears spiked. The system is made up of a dwarf star surrounded by seven “Earth-like” exoplanets at potentially habitable temperatures. If we want to know whether we’re alone in the universe or if we have company, the exploration of this planetary group may get us closer to an answer. Bill Nye explains some key signals NASA’s researchers will be looking for as they focus their intellect, and telescopes, towards this extraordinary next step in our history.
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Bill Nye: So with respect to the seven planets orbiting the star that was found by the TRAPPIST-1 program how cool is this. Seven planets closer to their ultra cool dwarf star than our planet Mercury is to our sun. And yet three of them apparently have a surface temperature suited to liquid water which immediately makes one wonder could there be living things there. And that would get to the deep question are we alone in the universe? So the TRAPPIST-1 investigation which is done as part of NASA science which is just not very much money in the big scheme of things is making these discoveries that have the potential to change the course of human history. I’m not kidding. If we discovered life on another world, even one that remotely distant – it’s 40 lightyears away – it would change everything. We saw methane in that atmosphere in the coming year using the Spitzer space telescope and the European southern observatory in Chile.
They said they’re going to do their best to assay or figure out what’s going on with the atmospheres in the coming year. So the Spitzer space telescope, for example, has this coolant to keep it crazy cold, just a few Kelvins above absolute zero. But it’s run out of coolant. But still you’re in deep space so it’s pretty cold anyway. And so they call it the warm mission but it’s not really that warm. And they’re going to try to refocus or properly focus and aim it to assess what’s in the atmospheres. Then keep in mind the James Webb space telescope is coming on we strongly believe still on schedule 2018 which isn’t that far off. And this is such an intriguing solar system that you just can’t help but want to point telescopes at it.
It would be extraordinary. It would just be extraordinary. What if we saw industrial gases in one of those atmospheres? It would be amazing if they have their own industry out there. Then you’d point a radio telescope there and listen and see if there’s anybody broadcasting game shows or something on TRAPPIST-3 or whatever the heck it is. So it’s really a cool thing and it is a fantastic use of our intellect and treasure which may lead to a discovery that is really – it’s hard to even imagine the profundity, how significant it would be.

Bill Nye's Open Letter to President Donald Trump

Bill Nye, CEO of The Planetary Society, and our Board of Directors present five recommendations to the Trump administration as it contemplates the future of the U.S. space program.
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The Planetary Society has inspired millions of people to explore other worlds and seek other life. With the mission to empower the world's citizens to advance space science and exploration, its international membership makes the non-governmental Planetary Society the largest space interest group in the world. Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman founded the Planetary Society in 1980. Bill Nye, a longtime member of the Planetary Society's Board, serves as CEO.

Tucker Carlson vs. Bill Nye: Round Two – The Science Guy's Reply

On February 27, Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson invited Bill Nye onto his show to talk about climate change, only to yell over him, belittle his qualifications, and bafflingly interrupt answers to demand answers. Here, Bill Nye addresses the heated exchange and how the polarization of the media has skewed the climate change “debate”. He also wonders why climate deniers won’t put their money where their mouth is, because Nye is ready to make a wager, and has publicly been offering for years—with no takers. Bill Nye's most recent book is Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World.
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Tucker Carlson: So much of this you don’t know. You pretend to know but you don’t know, and you bully people who ask you questions.
Bill Nye: I really have to disagree with you. I’ve spent a lot of time with this topic.
Tucker Carlson: I’m open minded. You are not.
Bill Nye: Mr. Carlson. What happened to you man? You used to be affable. You used to be friendly. You used to wear a nice tie. Now you wear one of those bibs and I don’t know. So I don’t know what happened to you man but I want you to consider that from a scientific perspective pick the number you like, 97 percent of the world’s scientists, very close to 100 percent of the world’s scientists are very concerned about climate change. And so why aren’t some people concerned about it?
When media outlets were allowed to be consolidated in the1980s. Then it developed these two factions like I don’t remember it having. And by that I think two factions are a normal course of events where you have males and females, you have boys and girls whether it’s fruit flies or dandelions or you and me. And in the World Cup soccer you end up with two teams. The World Series baseball you end up with two teams. It’s really hard to have three teams. And two political parties nominally. So somebody who understands this better than I do may observe that the media have divided into two camps. But from our point of view on the science and engineering side you’ve got to respect the facts at some level. You’ve got to respect what is scientifically provable. And then speaking of authorities and mistrust of authorities, the crowd at the inauguration. It was an objectively smaller crowd than the crowd the next day at the women’s march.
If someone asserts that the crowd is bigger when it was clearly smaller then everything else he or she says is subject to question. And this had led to a lot of trouble. So I think though that built into the U.S. government which includes the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights is freedom of the press. Built in is change. So I’m very hopeful, I’m optimistic that things will change. That my understanding is subscriptions to so called mainstream media, Washington Post, New York Times and so on have gone up in response to this approach to objective truths. So that will probably be to the good. But how fast will it happen and what will go wrong in the meantime? These are big questions.
And then as far as my thing with Mr. Carlson, I don’t know. He used to not interview that way. He used to not just talk the whole time.
Tucker Carlson: At what point would it have changed? And I’m just saying you don’t actually know because it’s unknowable.
Bill Nye: This is how long it takes you to interrupt me, OK. It takes you quite a bit less than six seconds. I’d go back again in a second Mr. Carlson. If you had me on again I will come right back on. Bring it on man. And you know what else Mr. Carlson, I’ll bet you $10,000 that 2010-2020 will be the hottest decade on record. I offered a bet of $10,000 to Joe Bastardi who is a Fox news contributor and Marc Morano who I’m not sure is a contributor but used to appear on your station routinely, your network routinely. I bet them each $10,000 bucks 2010-2020 would be the hottest decade on record. I bet them each another $10,000 bucks on the decade, $10,000 bucks on the year 2016. 2016 would have been among the top ten hottest years on record. Wait, there’s more. 2016 was the hottest year on record. And your guys, the people that Fox News heretofore supports in this would not take either bet - $40,000. Wouldn’t take the bet. Could have been theirs. I’m good for it.

‘Hey Bill Nye, Our Brains Are All the Same – Why Aren’t People More Identical?’

Our brains are the same organ, but no way are we all the same people. So why do we like different things, if we’re all made of roughly the same parts? Everybody’s brain development is a little bit different, explains Bill Nye, whether that’s physiologically through chemical variations in air, water, and agriculture; or culturally through societal influence and tradition. Our genes too are different, determining what tastes, sounds, and other stimuli we might like. Our differences usually reside in those trivialities – we have favorite flavors of ice-cream, we find harmony in radically different music, we either love or hate chili. But when you take a wider view and examine our emotional lives, ambitions, and sense of self, those predilections fade away. “If nothing else,” says Nye, “I have learned in life people are a heck of a lot more alike than they are different.” Bill Nye's most recent book is Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World.
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Transcript: Bill Nye: Shouldn't we all have the same favorites? Aren't we all the same? Don't our brains all grow the same? The answer is no and yes. That is to say we have much more - we are much more alike than we are different. This old question if I see red is it the same to you as it is to me like what I think is red is really green and your brain learns to call what your green is my red and so on? Okay these are good questions, but I think the reason we have favorites is that we all are slightly different. We do not look identical. We are not biological clones. Everybody is a little different. Everybody is exposed to different experiences and different chemicals, different things in the air and water as you grow up. So what you prefer in food could change from one place to another based on your environment. And everybody's genes are different. One exception might be identical twins. But everybody's genes are different and so what we prefer, what we like, what we find as favorites is different from one person to another. But if nothing else I have learned in life people are a heck of a lot more alike than they are different.
You'll find that if you like a yummy chocolate dessert it's very likely that someone else will like that yummy chocolate dessert. That your favorites you maybe surprised are favored by a great many people. When you get into disagreements it's often I think a result of your experiences. Like I've had great experience eating ice cream with honey, vanilla ice cream with honey. Every time I think about it I think about my dad and I have good thoughts. But there's other people who think vanilla ice cream, that's not interesting enough to me. Honey, that's too commonplace. I won't say I feel bad for you but that means more vanilla and honey for me. You'll find people are more alike than they are different and enjoy the favorites, celebrate these little differences. It's part of what makes life fun. Carry on.

'Hey Bill Nye, What If the World Were Run by Scientists and Engineers?'

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Wei: Hi Bill. My name is Wei. I'm an electronic engineer coming from China. A big fan to your show by the way. My question is hypothetically instead of politicians if the world were only run by engineers and scientists would it be a better place in your opinion? Thanks.
Bill Nye: Wei. Thank you so much for calling and thanks for being a fan of the show. You've asked a great question and categorically the world would not be a better place run by engineers. I say this all the time. I spend time with rocket scientist, a lot of time with them. From time to time I spend time with Nobel laureates. You do not want these people teaching kindergarten by way of example, they're just not qualified. When you find somebody who's interested in making deals, in compromising, in empathizing with people, in other words feeling what they're feeling and then trying to establish laws and traditions that benefit everyone, when you find someone that wants that job that to me is amazing and we need those people, those people would be politicians.
With that said, what we want are politicians who are scientifically literate, who are technically informed. Now you're in China and you have what in the U.S. people often referred to as a technocracy. You have a system of government that is run largely by engineers or scientists in what in the U.S. we would call top down fashion. People in power make decisions for everyone. And the system is workable. I mean my goodness China is this extraordinary economy and so on. But the experiment in the United States and the other Western democracies is to have representatives that work the system top down but are elected by everybody. And the idea is that this would be more fair, this would be consistent with how everybody feels. So I will say that what we want is people making decisions on behalf of all of us that are in the best interest of all of us.
And the best interest of everybody has to do with science and technology. We cannot have sewer systems and the Internet and this communication that you send in here, you couldn't have Big Think without the technology of electronics, which is enabled by mining extraordinary metals and geologist and physicists and chemists and everybody is fed through agriculture, which is another important biological aspects of biological science. We need science for everything, but what we want is our politicians to understand that and appreciate it and celebrate it and so move science forward. That is a great question but I will tell you in my opinion having a bunch of engineers, and I'm an engineer don't get me wrong man, having a bunch of engineers run things is probably not what you want because the systems are created – engineering systems are generally created from the top down and there's just a good chance you'll miss things, you'll make mistakes and they're harder to correct once they're in place. What you want, as happens in evolution in nature, is you want to the extent possible decisions to be made from the bottom up and the expression we often hear in the U.S. is organically from the bottom up.
And so good luck to both of our governments. We all have to address climate change and I'm glad that our governments were able to sign a climate change agreement last year and I'm very much hoping we can stick to it because we are going to need everybody working together to address climate change and we are especially going to need scientists and engineers to create or enable technical solutions to specific things. Renewable reliable electricity for everyone, clean water for everyone and access to global information. The Internet for everyone. Thank you Wei. Thanks for calling in.

‘Hey Bill Nye, Is Time Real?’ #TuesdaysWithBill

Time is this wild fourth dimension in nature, says Bill Nye. We depend on its neat measurements for survival – but subjectively it continues to elude us
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Alicia: Do you think time is real? For example, sometimes an hour can feel very short and sometimes it can feel very long depending on your perception. So then is time subjective? If it's a measurement of something what is it a measurement of? I'd really like to know your thoughts about time. Thank you.
Bill Nye: Alicia, that is fantastic. Notice that in English we don't have any other word for time except time. It's unique. It's this wild fourth dimension in nature. This is one dimension, this is one detention, this is one dimension and time is the fourth dimension. And we call it the fourth dimension not just in theoretical physics but in engineering. I worked on four dimensional auto pilots so you tell where you want to go and what altitude it is above sea level and then when you want to get there. Like you can't get there at any time. We have a whole bunch of other words. We have appointments. We have morning, afternoon, evening, noon time. We have a whole bunch of words describing periods of time, but when it comes to actual time we just have this one word it's a strange and surprising thing.
So along this line, in my opinion, which as you know is correct, I'm kidding, in my opinion time is both subjective and objective. What we do in science and engineering and in life, astronomy, is measure time as carefully as we can because it's so important to our every day world. You go to plant crops you want to know when to plant of them. You want to know when to harvest them. If you want to have a global positioning system that enables you to determine which side of the street you're on from your phone you need to take into account both the traditional passage of time that you might be familiar with watching a clock here on the earth's surface and the passage of time as it's affected by the speed of the spacecraft and the passage of time as it's affected by the gravity of the earth itself, both special and general relativity. It's astonishing.
So, we work very hard to measure time with all sorts of extraordinary clocks, but there is no question with our brains, which are wet chemical computers, we lose track of time. Sometimes it feels short, sometimes it feels long and it's just the nature I think of being constrained by measuring time with our brains. This is why we build instruments to measure time outside of ourselves externally. But it is a great question. And then the whole idea of science really started with this thing people used to call natural philosophy. And when you throw in the word philosophy for me you start asking this question like can you know anything, let alone what time it is or how long it's been since something happened or when something will happen in the future or whether or not it will happen at all, these are philosophical questions. I feel that you can get yourself pretty spun up in saying to yourself there's no way to know anything. Philosophically you can't know anything. On the other hand, it seems to me we can know a great deal objectively about nature and that includes time and it's passage.
One last thought Alicia, when I think about my grandfather he had no idea, no understanding of relativity. Not because he was a bad person, because no one had discovered it yet. And so I just wonder what else it is about the nature of time or the nature of what physicists, astrophysicists like to call space time where you talk about these four dimensions at once X, Y, Z, and T. I cannot help but wonder there is something else undiscovered about time and perhaps you and I will be alive, not much more time will have passed before this discovery is made. Carry on. Excellent question. Thank you.

'Hey Bill Nye, What If Life Had Evolved From Viruses?’ #TuesdaysWithBill

Evolutionary biologists generally agree that humans evolved from a bacteria-like ancestor, rather than a viral one. But what if we're chemically connected?
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Viewer: Hey Bill. I'm just curious, what would life look like if it had evolved from viruses instead of bacteria?
Bill Nye: Maybe life did evolve from viruses and we just don't know it. However, it sure looks like bacteria went off on their own. And talking some more about me, in my book Undeniable, which I like to think of as a primer on evolution, I speculated that viruses should have their own domain of life, the vera, which in the Latin would be a second declension noun. In Latin apparently they did not have a plural of virus, they never needed one, they never used it in the way we use it today. So I don't know if life evolved from viruses, but in my own experience I am thoroughly charmed by the science fiction story Andromeda Strain where the compartmentalization of the chemicals needed for life was done with crystals rather than with membranes. And it's science fiction everybody, but bacteria are different from viruses in that bacteria have these separate structures whereas viruses seem to be a single molecule, what you might think of as a single molecule. And so viruses are more akin to proteins than they are to bacteria, but proteins are created by bacteria so it is very reasonable that there is some ancestor to viruses and bacteria so that they have in common a common chemical ancestor. Proving that seems to me it should be possible.
When I was growing up people celebrated and questioned and thought hard about the Miller Urey experiment or Urey Miller experiment done by these two scientists who tried to create the conditions of the primordial earth in a big glass flask. And apparently the one thing they didn't all the way figure out was sulfur, which now people generally believe would have come into the earth's atmosphere from volcanoes.
I was in school at Cornell University I walked into the Space Sciences Building when Carl Sagan was very active and teaching classes and stuff and they had the Urey Miller experiment running. It was a big glass flask with these electrodes sparking because it was presumed or is presumed that in the ancient atmosphere there was lightning and this electricity could cause chemical changes that would have been very, very fast. And so the idea is that you would look for or try to create molecules that through their natural existence created copies of themselves. And so that was the goal.
It turns out that creating amino acids, these are biological molecules that have a carbon with a double bond and an oxygen on the side, amino acids aren't apparently that hard to create. And we find them in asteroids and we find them all over the earth and scientist or chemists have been able to create amino acids that have the same pattern but don't exist in nature or we haven't found them in living systems, instead they're very similar but we don't find them in nature. So all this makes me think that it is reasonable that someone could create something akin to these primordial atmosphere primordial conditions on earth experiments that would make molecules that replicated themselves. And we would find that maybe there is a common ancestor to both viruses and bacteria. Whoa. Would that molecule be dangerous? Would it be like the super virus or the super bacterium? Intuitively I don't think so because we're all here. Whatever happened happened and it didn't kill us. So maybe you'll be the guy that figures out the Urey Miller and the next step, the next step of Urey Miller, the next step of self-replicating molecules with primordial components. It is a very compelling idea. Keep us posted.

‘Hey Bill Nye, What Technology Can We Expect to Have 50 Years From Now?’ #TuesdaysWithBill

If we could jump 50 years into the future, what will our world look like? Flying cars? Hologram phones? Bill Nye sees two technological paths ahead – and we're in the fork between them at this very moment.
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Sailmen: Hey Bill. My name is Sailmen. I'm an industrial engineering student at the University of Miami. I was wondering if you could describe how you think the world is going to look technologically and socially in say 50 or 60 years? I'm pretty sure people 50 years ago didn't really imagine us having drones or taking pictures or videos or stuff like that. So can you give us an idea of what you think the world is going to be like in 50 years? Thank you.
Bill Nye: Sailmen, first of all I have no idea. Second, I'll give you some thoughts. I very much hope we're at a turning point, we're at a crossroads, we're at a fork in the road. I very much hope in the next 50 years virtually all of our electricity, let's just start with 80 percent of our electricity, is made renewably from wind and solar, some geothermal, some tidal energy and we run the whole place renewalably. That would be fantastic. This next thing isn't that hard to predict. There will be very few human-driven cars. Most automobiles in 50 years will be automatic, will be driverless. In the same way you get on a train at the airport and you go from one terminal to another, you trust that train to do that, it stays on the track. It just isn't that far from now to have cars that drive themselves, especially in big cities. I'm very hopeful that the cars will almost entirely be electric. There will be very few fuel-powered cars in 50 years. That's a tough prediction.
What I think in a more grim or on the way to a apocalyptic vision – the division between the rich people and the poor people has a very good chance of getting bigger and bigger. There will be fewer and fewer people controlling more and more wealth. I can easily see that happening. But if people like you vote and participate then maybe that won't happen and we can actually make the world more fair.
The U.S. just went through an extraordinary election, like nothing I've ever seen. And not that it's all about what I've seen but no one anticipated such a remarkable outcome. Analyses were done, or polls were taken, to show that if everybody your age, only your age voted – these would be millennials and generation X people – if only you had voted the election would have overwhelmingly gone the other way. So I'm pretty sure the conservatives who are clinging to the old ways of making energy, the old ways of distributing energy I'm pretty sure those people realize that they're going to age out, that their political influence will fade quickly. And this last election is almost certainly their last gasp and so it's going to be a near run thing.
Either in the next decade or 15 years the U.S. becomes the world leader in renewable technologies or the U.S. just continues to divide the rich and the poor and global climate change gets stronger and stronger the ocean gets bigger and bigger as it gets warmer and the quality of life for a lot of people goes down. We’ll see.
But man you've given me a lot to think about. I want you to change the world. Go get them Sailmen. Let's go.

Has technology advanced enough that we could stitch together body parts and reanimate the dead? Bill Nye one-ups that old-school Frankenstein vision with newer (and cooler) scientific possibilities.
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Transcript - Lauren: Hi Bill Nye. My name is Lauren . I'm . First off I'd like to say that you're my favorite person ever in the world. But my question is do you think we can build our own modern day Frankenstein sewn together body parts and somehow reanimating it, do you think it's possible because you seem like the person to ask this. Anyway, thank you so much. I hope to see you on Big Think.
Bill Nye: Lauren, reanimating people from different body parts. Probably not, but something even more amazing is about to happen in biology and genetics. One point of clarification, Dr. Frankenstein created what came to be called Frankenstein's monster. The monster himself was not really called Frankenstein. Just a little science fiction point of interest there. So what will probably happen in your lifetime, just judging how old you appear on Big Think, is people like you will be able to regenerate parts of your body using your own cells that technologist in medicine and genetics are finding ways to get your own body to create more cells that it didn't used to be able to create. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/08RXv5.

'Hey Bill Nye, What's the Best Way to Handle Overpopulation?' #TuesdaysWithBill

How will we deal with the impending overpopulation crisis – and how much of a crisis is it anyway?
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Transcript - Martina: Hey Bill it's Martina from Slovakia. I'm studying medical chemistry and I have two questions to be answered. The first one is the question how would you probably solve the problem of still growing population? And the second question is very important is…
Bill Nye: Will I marry you? So Martina, I'll get to your second question at the end. A growing population is a problem, but notice that the rate that the human population is growing is slowing down and this is almost certainly not so much a consequence of finite resources, which is what people like Malfis speculated late in the 18th century, it's not a question of finite resources it's apparently raising the standard of living of women and girls, people like you. As women and girls get better educated they have fewer kids and the kids they do have have more resources so they're better taken care of and they are more successful. So what we want to do, in my world over here in science education, is get women and girls around the world as educated as best we can as fast as we can so that there will be more resources per person in the coming years. The world's population is almost certainly going to go to nine billion humans, it very well may go to ten billion. And apparently the earth has enough resources for that and we just have to redistribute or reconfigure the way we use energy, water and the way we distribute information. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/vxCJSA.

'Hey Bill Nye, Is Cold Fusion Possible?' #TuesdaysWithBill

Did you know that our fascination with cold fusion — unlimited energy created at room temperature — all began with the holder of the first patent for the television?
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Transcript - Loki: Good evening Mr. Nye. My name is Loki and I have Cerebral Palsy so I'm sorry if I sound weird or look weird, but my question to you is on cold fusion. Was it something that actually had merit or was it something that the scientific community legitimately had reasons for banning it. Your thoughts please.
Bill Nye: Loki, Loki, Loki, you don't look that weird it to us sir. You look fine. About cold fusion, so here was the idea. There's a guy who really had the first patent on television was the mythic, this is really his name, Philo Farnsworth. And it is said he told people that he had the idea for television by plowing his uncle's potato field as a kid and he looked at the way the furloughs went across the field and inferred that would be a way to make a moving picture. That same guy got it in his head that he could make neutrons do whatever he wanted, like he had this one success and he got it in his head that he could influence neutrons and he created a device which he called a phaser and that word has later been used to describe rotating vectors in light waves and heat waves. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/s8flkB.

'Hey Bill Nye, Do You Think about Your Mortality?' #TuesdaysWithBill

The days may seem long, but life itself is rather short. Bill Nye the Science Guy puts the human lifespan into perspective with a hard look at the numbers that define our time on Earth.
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Transcript - Josh: Hey Bill. Do you ever think about your mortality? Does it ever bother you to think that one day you just won't exist? I know you're not religious but do you think anything happens when we die or is it just over, no thoughts, nothing like that? And if given the choice to live longer in an artificial body would you take that or not? Thanks. Bye.
Bill Nye: What a question. That was Josh? Josh, fabulous question. Yes I think about mortality continually man. I won't say constantly but everyday. So I'd like to just give you something to think about. If you lived to be 82 and seven weeks, depends on leap years as to the exact number of weeks, you get 30,000 days on earth, 30,000. When you're in kindergarten 30,000 sounds like a lot, almost an unimaginably big number. When you are my age, I'm 61, you start to see that 30,000 really isn't that many. And to show you it's not that many I encourage you to imagine a National Football League stadium. They typically hold way more than 70,000 people, certainly way more than 60,000 people. So imagine sitting in a different seat every day of your life and watching your life take place down on the field, imagine this. Sit in a different seat everyday. Day-to-day it looks about the same right? But with 30,000 you don't get halfway around, halfway around and you're dead. It sucks man. So it's why it's important to do your best to live your life as best as you can every day. This doesn't mean you become a hedonist and just have a joyride everyday, you're working too big goals but no one appreciate that everybody is going to die. I have never met anyone who is not going to die. I've never met anyone who's of a certain age who is not already dead. It sucks. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/La9Qmr.

'Hey Bill Nye, If Scientific Discoveries Are Dangerous, Should They Be Censored?' #TuesdaysWithBill

There is censorship in science, admits Bill Nye – but not nearly as much as there should be.
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Transcript - Taylor Packard: Hey Bill Nye it's Taylor Packard. I was wondering what you think about the censorship of scientific discoveries if the discovery could be used in a hurtful way. If there were censorship how should the censorship process be designed and what groups should be involved in determining what the public does and does not get to know? Thanks so much.
Bill Nye: Taylor. Taylor. Taylor. We in the scientific community have this process, we have this censorship process in the sense that we have what's called peer review. This is where somebody comes up with a scientific claim or belief or test result, experimental result, other people read it, read the paper, study his or her results and see if there's any validity to them. And then if there is that paper or that information gets published. So there is in a sense scientific censorship in a sense. If someone makes an extraordinary claim that's silly or can provably wrong there are systems in place to point out that this thing is not true and ignore it, it didn't work, it's not relevant. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/OJs9kU.

A very small person asks a very big question: why aren't the moons of gaseous planets also made of gas?
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Transcript - Aria: Hi Bill Nye. My name is Aria. My question is where does all moons come from and why does gas giants not have gas moons?
Bill Nye: Wow. That is a great question Aria. Wow. First of all I was alive when people figured out or satisfied themselves as were our moon came from. And it's generally agreed that our moon was created when the earth was hit with another pretty big thing, another asteroid. And the impact was very hard and the energy of the smashing was converted to heat and both the earth and the moon were hot and molten and they both cooled off and here we are with this other separate thing in orbit around us. Now why do gas giants not have gas moons is a great question and the answer is almost certainly because of gravity. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/9MZNXz.

Climate change is a topic that's politically charged rather than scientifically charged. Bill Nye offers tips for how those on the side of science can begin to have meaningful conversations with skeptics.
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Transcript - Danny Miller: Hello Bill. My name is Danny Miller. Politically I tend to be conservative. I believe that anthropogenic global warming is real and that the Big Bang Theory and evolution are perfectly valid theories. Obviously this puts me at odds with most people in my demographic and I find that conversations with my peers on these topics usually develop into arguments on some other random subject entirely. My question to you is why are these topics so politically charged in the matters of science and not politics and how do I engage into meaningful conversation? Thank you for answering.
Bill Nye: Danny. Danny. Danny. You have touched on a subject that I find
fascinating and I've spent a lot of time on myself so I'm really glad you asked this. But when it comes to anthropogenic global climate change, or human caused global climate change, it's politicized because of the fossil fuel industry. And I've spent a lot of time with this, I've asked myself as a native of the United States. I have an engineering agree in the United States; I've got my license and I practice - I'm an engineer in the United States. Why is the United States not of the world leader in addressing climate change? Why isn't the United States the world leader in renewable energies, better water purification or desalinization techniques? Better ways to provide the Internet to everyone on earth? Why isn't of the U.S. leading? Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/dXa2mW.

'Hey Bill Nye, What's the Evolutionary Purpose of Music and Art?'

The impulse to create art and music comes from deep evolutionary drives, explains Bill Nye the Science Guy. In the animal kingdom, song and visual displays are great tools for, um, flirting.
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Transcript: Michael Montoya: Hi Bill. Michael Montoya here. What do you think is the evolutionary advantage to humanity being both musically and artistically creative? And where do you think this initial spark of creativity came from?
Bill Nye: Michael. Michael. This is a great question and susceptible to speculation. Apparently music and art is part of the way we communicate and it's certainly the way you attract mates. I'll just put it to you that way. Musicians and artists engage other people in a way that people who don't use music and don't use art do not. Now, there's a lot of talk about songbirds in evolutionary biology and they all have these songs, which must be pleasing to the ears of their potential mates and also must send messages to others of their species, so I guess to other species as well. I am angry; this is my territory; I'm looking for a mate; it's a sunny day. These sort of announcements are made by other species so you figure humans have just taken it just a whole other level with albums and record release parties and art exhibits and art museums and art galleries. So it really is deep within us and I think art enriches our lives, engages our brains and stimulates us in a way that nothing else we do does. So, this is only speculation on my part but music especially certainly inspires us. That's for sure. So carry on Michael. Turn it up loud.

'Hey Bill Nye, Why Do I Have to Go to School?' #TuesdaysWithBill

Bill Nye the Science Guy says we all go through a phase of disliking school. But that's because adolescence is a tough time in life for everyone. Thankfully, that phase is only temporary.
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Transcript - Aaron: My name is Aaron. I want to know why I have to come to school because I hate school.
Bill Nye: Aaron, many of us go through a phase of hating school. And generally you'll hate school because I'm looking at you, you're living at a time where you feel like you don't fit in and this time will pass. I know everybody tells you that but it's true. And it's also possible that you have a teacher that you're not crazy about. And so you'll get through this. Now if it's algebra, I'm looking at you estimating how old you are. The thing about math and algebra, trigonometry is you have to practice. There's just no way around it. You have to do it over and over. And you might be picking school just to be rebellious. We all go through a rebellious phase. But I guarantee you if you learn algebra you'll be able to think abstractly, not just about numbers but about all sorts of things and this will benefit you greatly in life.
It looks like you're sitting in a lab. It looks like you're sitting in a laboratory setting there. It looks like a biology class. There's nothing cooler than biology. In biology you have to memorize things because biologists, by long tradition, just make up words. They're crazy for making up words. Who doesn't love reverse transcriptase? Who doesn't love a Golgi body and so on? There's some memorization involved. Endoreticulum. I'm sorry man you just got to memorize some words, but it's worth it and you will fit in better as the years go on. Carry on man.

'Hey Bill Nye, What Will Happen to Life on Earth If the Moon Keeps Drifting Away From Us? '

Farewell Moon, we barely knew you.
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Transcript - Question: Hi. I’m Chris. I’m Brendan. We did some research and we saw that the moon is drifting away from Earth at 1.40 inches per year. We’re wondering what would happen if the moon finally drifts away. Thanks.
Bill Nye: Chris, Brandon I believe. Brendan. Greetings. Yes the moon is moving away from the Earth. What happens when the moon eventually moves away from the Earth. You should be a celestial mechanician. You should be an orbital mechanical engineer. You should get a job at jet propulsion lab or the applied physics lab. That’s what you should do. That’s what these people do all day is figure out the orbital motions of these various bodies. So the moon’s moving away so you would presume its influence on the tide would steadily decrease. And moving away its orbital period will get slightly longer so the tides will get slightly more spread out. But when it becomes a significant thing that’s a long time in the future. But it’s fun to think about isn’t it? It’s fun to wonder. So keep an eye on things out there in space and just while we’re here consider joining the Planetary Society. That’s what we talk about all the time is orbital motions, how we’re going to get spacecraft to extraordinary destinations here in the solar system – Mars, Europa the moon of Jupiter with twice as much sea water of the Earth.
Do you want to set up a telescope on the far side of the moon? If you want to do that you’re going to have to understand these orbital motions. Big fun Chris, Brendan. This stuff is what makes people go to schools to learn math so they can compute orbital motions and understand the motions of the heavens. So go for it.

'Hey Bill Nye, Are We More a Product of Our Genes, or of Our Lifestyle?'

Why are we the way that we are - is it nature or nurture? This week, Bill Nye answers a question from Evan, who is having a science argument with his mom.
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Evan: Hi Bill. My name is Evan. I am 16 years old. Here's my question for you, are physical traits such as height determined mostly by genes or by nutrition and exercise? Give me a percentage number. My mom and I are having an argument over this and I heavily believe that it's more of the genes that contribute to this trait such as height. Thank you.
Bill Nye: Evan, that's a great question. The right answer is clearly both. So, some people are genetically predisposed to be tall as you point out, but I can tell you people in the West, like in our civilization here in the United States and Canada, are getting taller; offspring are growing taller and taller and that is almost certainly do to improved nutrition. And archaeologists who love this stuff go digging up old graves in big cities and they find that people in the 1700s and the 18th century were not as tall as their descendants are today. And this is almost certainly a result of nutrition. So it's both. Furthermore, it's something that just fascinates me. In Africa - all of our ancestors are ultimately from Africa. And Africa you find indigenous people, tribes who have lived there for millennia that are both very tall where food is abundant and there's other tribes that are not especially tall where food is harder to get. And it's fascinating. Right there to this day you can find where the environment, the evolutionary pressure to find nutrition, to find food has affected the success of offspring. If you're too tall and there's not enough food around you can't feed yourself and so you don't have kids. If on the other hand you live where food is abundant, fruit is growing on trees, as the saying goes, you can be taller and be just ultimately a bigger animal in the same forest, in the same jungle and just be more successful. So the answer is both. You've got to eat breakfast. I'll leave you with that. If you don't eat breakfast you're just not going to be as successful in life.

Could we use computers to translate animal communication into human language? If so, what would we learn? And might it unlock a new understanding of existence and our place in the cosmos?
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Transcript - Hassa: Hey Bill. I’m a big fan of your work. This is Hassa from Tunisia. I’m at the University of Freiburg in Germany. My question for you today is how can it be that human beings still can’t communicate with animals? I mean we have powerful computers by now. Isn’t it just easier to just record a lot of data, let the computers look for a pattern and play them back and it allows the responses. Imagine all the implications. Animals can become better tools for us or even closer friends. And can even ask them what their perspective of life is. I hope you answer my question. Have a nice day.
Bill Nye: Hello, hello. Hassick? Did I pronounce it correctly? I’m doing my best. I only heard it once and the sound is not too good. Hassick, greetings. Thank you for your question. Can we communicate with animals better than we do now. Well I’ve spent a lot of time with dogs and I really have a sense of what they’re thinking. I certainly have a sense of when they’re happy and when they’re sad. I’ve spent a little bit of time with gorillas. Now I’m talking about a tiny amount of time. But you can certainly tell when a gorilla is happy, when a gorilla is angry and you can also tell when gorillas are communicating with each other. Now this is one of the things I wonder about all the time. Is there a gradient, is there an increasing stair step of intelligence, of language skill between let’s say a gibbon, a bonobo, a gorilla, a chimpanzee, a human. Is there a gradient of intelligence from cow to horse to zebra to giraffe. I don’t know but these animals certainly the mammals anyway certainly have emotions that we can detect and interact with. But I’m very skeptical so far that animals really ponder the universe and our place within it. And I’m very skeptical that bonobos or chimpanzees have developed something like the periodic table of the elements.

'Hey Bill Nye, What Can One Person Do to Save the World?' #TuesdaysWithBill

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Transcript - Victoria: Hi there Bill. My name is Victoria. I am a middle school student from Washington state. Environment is quite humid right now and it's time to make a change, but a lot of people don't see the threat or they don't want to make a change. My question is how can we to prepare the planet and what actions we can start right now to save the world? I know it's hard but I just hope that you can give some clues. Thank you very much.
Bill Nye: Victoria. Victoria. You are the key to the future my friend. So here's the thing, you live in Washington state. I lived in Seattle for many years. I love Washington. Go Seahawks. I'm right there my friend. Go Mariners. Now, you are in middle school. You are the future. People will tell you that but they're not kidding. So what we want you to do his influence your parents and make sure they vote. Voting is the most important thing for us, especially this year. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/917GCL.

'Hey Bill Nye, Which Extinct Animal Would You Like to See Alive Again?' #TuesdaysWithBill

Given all the animals that have gone extinct during Earth's 4.5 billion year history, Bill Nye would venture back to the 1700s to revive a lovable lost sea animal then living off the coast of Alaska.
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Transcript - Christian: Hello Mr. Nye. My question is that even though it would never happen if you could go back in time to observe any prehistoric animal or animals which would it be? For me it would be the giant arthropods of the carboniferous.
Bill Nye: Well Christian, this is a fabulous hypothetical question but let’s say we didn’t go prehistoric. Let’s say we went historic. The animal that I would like to see is the Steller’s sea cow. This is a marine mammal apparently very much like a manatee but lived in salt water in the Bering Sea and then off Alaska or Siberia. And this thing was driven to extinction not too long ago, the 1700s. And I can imagine an extraordinary technology that will take the bones of one of these creatures which are in certain collections and somehow reproduce effectively enough the DNA of that animal and have him or her come back and start over again. Because that animal very recently was in the ecosystem up there, as I say up there, in Alaska and Siberia, the Bering Sea perhaps. That it might be a great thing to actually reintroduce it to the ecosystem. And it would be a spectacular deal. As far as going way back in time, what sells in movies? Giant ancient dinosaurs. I give you though that the huge millipedes that you were talking about, Christian, that’s cool. But it’s not first on my list. We’ll see how it goes. It’s a cool question.

‘Hey Bill Nye, Is There a Conspiracy to Cover Up Agricultural Climate Change?’ #TuesdaysWithBill

Methane is a significant greenhouse gas, so how come we hear so much about fossil fuels? Is there a vast bovine conspiracy hiding the impact of the agricultural industry from the public eye?
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Transcript - Batman: Hello Bill. I’m Batman and I’m a big fan. My question to you is why isn’t the agricultural sector especially with the cows being addressed with global warming with as much media attention as oil companies seeing as it is actually the biggest factor affecting global warming. At this day and age do you believe that there is a conspiracy? Thank you.
Bill Nye: Batman. Thank you for your question. I hardly recognized you. I really appreciate you introducing yourself. So there is actually a lot of attention being drawn to the effect of agriculture on climate change. And I want to emphasize that’s really cow belches coming out the mouth where most of the methane comes from. They have four stomachs. They do things a little differently than we do. And people are studying ways to make cows less belchful. I don’t know how effective they’re going to be but there is actually a lot of attention being drawn to it. As far as there being a conspiracy I really wouldn’t call it a conspiracy. We’ve been doing it this way for so long, 250 years, burning fossil fuels, burning the material of ancient swamps or wetlands that it’s a hard habit to break. When it comes to agriculture keep in mind that there are 7.3 billion people around today. But by 2050 there will be at least 9 billion people. There may be 10 billion people. And so those people are going to have to eat and it’s very reasonable that all of us will move increasingly toward a plant based diet and it will not be economical to raise cattle and sell meat. Read The Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/e7M61N.

‘Hey Bill Nye, Is a Sense of Humor Exclusive to Human Beings?’ #TuesdaysWithBill

Is the animal kingdom oblivious to our jokes or just a really tough crowd? Bill Nye explores the link between intelligence and humor.
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Transcript - Peter: Hello Bill. My name is Peter. I live in Miami and my question has to do with the sense of humor. It seems logical that sense of humor is a sign of higher intelligence mainly because it usually involves more than one person. And so my question is is there any evidence that any other animal other than man has a sense of humor? Thanks.
Bill Nye: Peter. Peter in Miami. Greetings. Is a sense of humor inherent? I think so. It seems to me I’ve watched chimpanzees have fun with each other. Just watching them. I think gibbons have fun. I think they do things for fun and I will definitely say this. There’s some famous pictures of penguins climbing up the ice hill and sliding down on their penguin tummies to go head first into the what you and I would think really cold water but they dig it apparently. And I cannot think of any evolutionary reason for that except that it just looks like they’re having fun. And so to me fun and a sense of humor are intimately connected. Now I will say something about evolution and sense of humor. What you want if you’re trying to attract a mate I think a sense of humor is very important. I think if you’re funny, if you’re engaging, if you have a good smile especially you’re more attractive to the opposite sex. Read Full Transcript Here: http://goo.gl/q5wJNb.

'Hey Bill Nye, How Will We Know When to Believe a Time Traveler?' #TuesdaysWithBill

If someone comes back from the future, they ought to have packed one thing in their carry on: proof.
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Transcript - Lana: Hey Bill Nye. My name is Lana and I have a question about time travel. So recently I have been searching up various information about a so called time traveler named John Titor who claimed that he came from the year 2036 and wrote about all of this in the early 2000's. So I have a question, can this possibly happen and can time travel actually exist? So thank you.
Bill Nye: Lana, I would say, if I understand this guy's claims, they are false. Time travel so far is not possible. There is a very reasonable theory that you could build a time machine in which you go faster or close to the speed of light, of course that would kill you because you would be accelerated in these very small radii and at very high speeds and you'd fly apart. But that aside, you can only go back in time to when the machine was built, just a complication. The other thing is when people make these extraordinary claims there's generally a way to prove them false, to prove them wrong. And this guy took the trouble to only go the 2036, see if he can tell you who one the Super Bowl. And the other big thing I always ask those guys, why isn't he rich? Couldn't he have invested in certain stocks? Couldn't he have seen certain eventualities, outcomes with the stock market, with certain manufactures, be it the Tesla Automobile Corporation, for example, or the Department of Defense in the United States coming up with some famous new invention? Wouldn't he have invested in certain farmland in the right part of the world to be especially productive? Why? So on and so on. So I really encourage you to look into this guy's claims. Now, in what we call skepticism or skeptical thought, and also it's a very popular phrase right now critical thinking, critical thinking skills, we evaluate claims, we look to see if a claim is true or false. You look at a specific thing this guy says that happens in the future and see if it really happens. In general when people make those claims – I'm 60 years old now. I've been through a lot of claims of the end of the world. Read Full Transcript Here: http://goo.gl/KtNC32.

‘Hey Bill Nye, Could the Government Be Hiding Extraterrestrials From Us?’ #TuesdaysWithBill

Peel off your tin-foil hat like a Hershey’s Kiss, because Bill Nye has a reality check for the alien conspiracy theorists out there.
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Transcript - Question: Hey Bill. So there are many videos online claiming to be extraterrestrial sightings. It just seems that the government is aware of extraterrestrials yet they reject the idea. Possibly they’re hiding the truth from us in fear of the knowledge greatly changing our daily lives. Do you believe these aliens exist and if so would you tell us?
Bill Nye: No I don’t believe the aliens exist coming to visit you and the government knows about it and hasn’t told you. No. Start with that. Two more things. First of all the whole alien thing really got revved up in 1947. There was a project called Sky Hook and the U.S. Government had these very cool super high altitude balloons and they were going to have a constellation of them or an armada of these balloons off the East Coast of the former Soviet Union with microphones tuned to listen for nuclear weapons tests. This was going to be big fun. And so they were testing the balloon in New Mexico and it was complicated and the winds blew the thing around and it crashed and it was impractical. The idea was kind of cool but it was a cold war idea that just didn’t work. Now this project was secret so yes, government people showed up. The U.S. Army swept up all the debris from the crash and took it away because it was secret. Read Full Transcript Here: http://goo.gl/yjEXWe.

‘Hey Bill Nye, Do You Believe in Ghosts and the Afterlife?’ #TuesdaysWithBill

Bill Nye tackles a tough question that every person alive has been hung up on – what happens after we die? Where does our life energy go?
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Transcript - Marsalina: Hi Bill Nye. My name is Marsalina. This is my son Ohenu. And we have a question about your perspective on ghosts and also what do you think happens to your life energy that ceases after you die? Is it just pushing daisies? Thank you.
Bill Nye: Marsha. Greetings. People have wondered about life after death since there have been people. It goes way, way back. We started with ghosts. I’ll tell you I don’t think there’s any such thing. I don’t think there’s anything to be afraid of when it comes to ghosts. I’m a member of both the skeptics and the counsel for scientific inquiry and we have looked and looked for haunted houses, for ghosts in cemeteries, for psychics who believe they’re in touch with people who are dead. And there’s absolutely no credible evidence. There’s no reason to believe that there are ghosts or life after death. People have tried and tried. And you may know that Houdini the famous magician said if anybody can come back from the dead it’s me man. I’m coming. And he never got in touch with anyone. No one ever heard from him. He had a secret word between he and his mother that he said I’ll give you the secret word when I come back. And do you know what the secret word is? Nobody knows, it was secret and he never came back. Read Full Transcript Here: http://goo.gl/vkVOdL.

'Hey Bill Nye, Can We Use Giant Magnets to Build a Space Elevator?' #TuesdaysWithBill

Bill Nye answers a question submitted by Nick: is it possible to take two giant magnets and use the repulsion force between the two to lift objects into space?
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Transcript - Nick: Nick here. I was wondering if it’s possible to take two giant magnets and use the repulsion force between the two to lift objects into space or can we set up stages along the way up and how that attraction and repulsion force send a type of space elevator up to the moon or anywhere we want to go. Let me know what you think.
Bill Nye: Nick. It’s Nick for sure. And it’s magnets to create space elevator. So do I just start talking? We’re ready to go? Nick, Nick, Nick. This is an interesting question. Let me say though starting out we all when you play with magnets and you feel the repulsive force it seems strong. But notice that it acts over a very short distance. Just nominally it goes – it’s not perfect but you can estimate it by saying it goes off as the cube of the distance. So if you have magnets this far apart and you make them twice that far apart they only haven an eighth as much umph. So using a magnet to push things up as high as the atmosphere would take an enormously strong magnet and where would that energy come from? Read Full Transcript Here: http://goo.gl/uAQnVM.

'Hey Bill Nye, If Humans Colonize Mars, How Will We Evolve?’ #TuesdaysWithBill

Colonizing Mars is a romantic notion but if it was possible, how would our bodies hold up and how would future generations evolve on a lower-gravity planet?
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Transcript - Victor: Hey Bill. My name is Victor and I’m from Markham, Ontario. The question I have for you this Tuesday pertains to human evolution and space colonization. I understand that humans are constantly evolving to adapt to the environment around us. For instance astronauts who have gone on long expeditions need to be carried out of their spacecraft after returning back to Earth. So what kind of evolutions do you think we might see in humans if we colonize a planet with lower gravity like Mars? Thank you.
Bill Nye: Victor, Victor, Victor. This is an excellent question and I appreciate you asking it. Notice that it is my strong belief that we will not colonize Mars. It’s a very romantic notion. You live in Ontario. I don’t know but it looks like your ancestors came from the west, the left coast of Canada and a lot of people who first colonized Canada were from Europe. And we have this vision that you leave your native country because you’re getting religiously persecuted or someone is making you a good deal on going to a new world where you can start a new life. And the people that came to North America from Europe thought this was great. They were going across North America eating everything, foraging in the forest, cutting down trees, making farms, finding all these remarkable natural resources, especially in Canada all these wonderful mineral resources. Read Full Transcript Here: http://goo.gl/k9mPtI.

'Hey Bill Nye, Can We Bridge the Gap Between Science and Religion?' #TuesdaysWithBill

Bill Nye answers the big one: Can faith and science can co-exist, or is religious belief dependent on ignoring science?
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Transcript - Chris Slade: Hi Bill. My name is Chris Slade and one of my goals in life is to help bridge the gap between science and the modern Christian. What is there that I could say to help convince others that the creation story is likely just a story that was told to people who wouldn’t have understood the complexities of science as we do today. I just want to show people that their religious beliefs don’t need to be dependent on ignoring science.
Bill Nye: Chris. Your religious beliefs don’t depend on ignoring science. Well I hope not. So just from my point of view Chris keep in mind I’m a mechanical engineer. I took nothing but physics. I love science. Science is what enabled us to create this computer communication system in this electronic infrastructure. Without science you couldn’t do this. And you use the word Christian so specifically there’s nothing in the New Testament of the Bible about electrons or protons or transistor-transistor logic or even modern or maybe most especially modern agriculture or genes or DNA and so on. So the question is if you have a religious tenet. If you hold a point of view that excludes something about modern science I don’t think the burden is on scientists or engineers to provide you a comfortable link. The link is for you. You have to reckon the facts as we call them with some belief system that is incompatible with it. Read Full Transcript Here: http://goo.gl/EbLR1B.

'Hey Bill Nye, If There Is a God, Should We Obey It?' #TuesdaysWithBill

Science Guy Bill Nye is thrown a deep religious hypothetical: If there is a god that is truly good, intelligent and all-knowing, should we submit to its governance?
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Transcript - Cameron: Hi Bill. My name’s Cameron and I am a junior at Libertyville High School in Washington. And I was just wondering on this hypothetical question if there was a completely intelligent all-knowing entity whether it was human or otherwise that if it existed and it was our leader if we should be completely subservient and submit to its governance if it really truly had our best interest at heart.
Bill Nye: This super entity that we should serve I don’t know. I see for me there’s no evidence of a super entity with a plan for everybody’s life. And this goes way back. Charles Darwin wrote about this, speculated about this. And another way to express it if there is a super entity running things why is everything so screwed up? And there reasons seems to be that humans are all interacting, all trying to get food, shelter and raise their kids and there’s conflict among us. It’s just the way humans are. And so if there is a super entity I would prefer that she or he was just a little more organized, just took care of things a little better. And the thing to be careful of in my opinion is when people you meet are sure that they have a super entity that’s telling them what to do that affects you. That is to say when they tell you you can’t do this or you can’t do that because the super entity of mine is telling me that I should tell you that you can’t do that. That’s when there’s conflict. And I presume you’re in Washington state and you know Washington state is way in the west of North America. Read Full Transcript Here: http://goo.gl/GOR7ik.

‘Hey Bill Nye, Is Playing the Lottery Rational?’ #TuesdaysWithBill

This week, Bill Nye the Science Guy talks about the chances of winning the lottery, and re-frames the system as a tax on the people who can least afford it.
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Uri: Hi Bill. My name is Uri. My question is about giving some chance to the chance. The probability of winning a lottery is very, very small. Nevertheless is playing lottery rational? Thanks.
Bill Nye: The lottery. Uri, Uri, Uri. I’ve got to tell you when I first – it doesn’t sound like you’re in the U.S.. I grew up in the U.S. and I lived in Seattle, Washington, for a while. And Washington in the United States is a western state. It has old traditions and the big thing is it’s not as populated as other states in the U.S. and there is a lottery. And I used to think it was kind of charming. If people wanted to play the lottery, okay, that’ll be fun for them. The chances of winning are very, very small – extraordinarily small. Almost everyone who ever plays, ever, loses. And I used to think it was benign or not any big deal, but I have changed my mind about that over the last 30 years. The lottery is mostly a tax on people who don’t know math. And the reason they don’t know math is because people like me have failed to enlighten people on what it really means when it’s one in 230 million. It means you will lose. That’s what it means. If you have a one in 230 million chance of winning it means you will lose. And when I was doing standup comedy I used to have a joke – a joke – about having a revolver, a gun, where the bullets are arranged in a circle.
I don’t know your ancestry, Uri, but you might be from one of the Eastern Bloc countries in Europe, and we have an expression in the United States – Russian roulette where there’s one bullet in the gun and you spin it and then you hold it to your head and see whether or not you’ll die. And that’s a one in six chance traditionally but in the lottery it’s one in 230 million or 450 million. So imagine a gun with 449 million, 999 thousand, 999 bullets in it and one empty chamber. You would not hold that to your head for two dollars – ever. And so I feel bad that the people who play the lottery are generally people with lower education and lower incomes. These are statistical facts. So we are accidentally taxing people who can least afford it. And it’s frustrating for me as a science educator. So my advice to you is don’t play the lottery. Use your dollars for something else. And if you do play the lottery, I understand you get some pleasure out of it, but keep in mind you almost always lose. And wait, there’s more to it. It preys on this other aspect of human nature where we embrace the successes and forget about the losses. This is how psychics make their living, palm readers and so on. You remember when they accidentally said the right thing and you forget when they said dozens of wrong things.
So people win. They bet a dollar and they win a five dollar lottery ticket, a five dollar reward. They almost always reinvest that five dollars or the four dollars to buy more lottery tickets. It seems like a cool idea and now in the United States there’s huge state incomes based on lotteries. But in the biggest sense it is a tax on the people who can least afford it. It’s frustrating. I’m frustrated. Thank you for asking that question, Uri.

'Hey Bill Nye, Can I Have Superpowers?' #TuesdaysWithBill

This week, Bill Nye the Science Guy weighs in on the reality of the timeless superhero wish, how not to break your legs while trying comic book moves, and the human virtues of Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker.
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Transcript - Jordan: My name is Jordan and my question is: can I have superpowers? Thank you.
Bill Nye: Jordan, Jordan, Jordan. Can you have superpowers? You’re asking an excellent question. I think it depends what you mean. So for me as a guy of your age, I very much wanted to be able to fly like Superman. But I tried several experiments. I was completely unable to do so even if I put on a cape. And I look at your video, I see you’re wearing a super-guy outfit and you look super. But without a cape I don’t know how well that’s going to work. The cape seems to be key for Superman. But even so we had a lot of stories when I was a kid that so-and-so thought he had superpowers and he jumped off the roof and he got killed. He jumped off the roof and he broke his leg. And so don’t jump off the roof. You probably don’t have superpowers. But then when you think about the Justice League of America, think about Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman and in there is Batman. Now Batman doesn’t have superpowers. He’s a human. Yet he made it into the Justice League as a superhero because he’s so smart. He took care of himself. He’s quite a gymnast, quite an athlete and he made all these cool devices.
The bat boomerang. The batarang. The utility belt which is full of all his super clever bat stuff. So I believe that Batman was as close as you’re going to get to having superpowers. Really smart. Trained himself athletically. Really good athlete. He is a complete guy as humans go. So strive for that. And if you can find a way to fly for real just jumping off your feet and flying without jumping off the roof, let us know. By the way I’ve met the Swiss skydiver who kind of is the guy who developed the wing suit. He jumps out of planes just wearing a wing, like wearing a cape like Batman has or Superman has. And he’s had some success. But a lot of people that have tried that, they haven’t had success. So careful. Read Full Transcript Here: http://goo.gl/zFfoCO.

Watch the talented Reggie Watts perform at the Exploratorium August 9th, 2012. Reggie was at the Exploratorium for an Osher Fellowship, and he graciously joined us at the end of a live webcast on Mars to share a little of his own feelings about the red planet!

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